File Upload Question Type

The File Upload question type allows you to have your respondents upload up to 10 files and/or documents as part of their survey response. You can choose the file extensions you wish to allow as well as a max upload size when you create the question.

You can use other common file extensions by adding them to the to the Allowable File Type field. The Allowable File Types must be separated by commas (no spaces). Review our list of supported file types.

Max Number of Files: You can limit the number of files a respondent can upload (1-10 at a time). There is no limit to how many files we can accept. So, if you have 10,000 respondents sending 5 files each, it's not going to be a problem.

Setup

Click the Question link on the page where you would like to add your File Upload question.

Select File Upload from the Question Type drop-down and enter the question you wish to ask.

Go to the Options tab and select your allowed file types. The list of file types you wish to allow should be comma separated with no spaces. We include most of the options by default but you can edit this list as needed.

The File Upload question does not work on the first page of an HTML embedded survey. It will work on any page following the first page.

Files cannot be added or changed within the Edit Response feature. If you need to make changes to the files in a response, you must use Edit Links.

The Allowable File Types must be separated by commas (no spaces).

Security

All files uploaded via the file upload question are stored using Amazon's Simple Storage Solution in a separate directory for each SurveyGizmo account. If your survey is using secure survey share links, the uploaded data will be encrypted in transit. All uploaded files are encrypted on disk on AWS.

Files uploaded to SurveyGizmo via the File Upload question can be set to be accessible to only logged-in SurveyGizmo users.

Depending on your preference for who can access respondent-uploaded files, you can enable/disable this setting on a per-survey basis via Advanced > Response Settings > File Upload Security*.

As of November 7th, 2016 all newly created accounts have the File Upload Security setting enabled by default, allowing access to uploaded files to only logged in SurveyGizmo users. This setting can be disabled per survey or account wide.

Survey Taking

On a desktop and most laptops, the File Upload question looks as follows:

Respondents can use the Browse... button to access files on their computer. Once a file is selected by a respondent, it is automatically saved in the question.

The File Upload question has limited functionality on iOS devices. However, it will allow respondents to upload images/videos saved to the device. If you access a File Upload question using iOS, you'll see the following:

Depending on the Android device, you can also access other file types. Please test this on intended devices before deploying as the fragmentation of Android software means that not all features are available on all devices.

Here is an example of what options you will see using Android:

Accessing Uploaded Files

If you have a File Upload question included in your survey, you can view the files uploaded in two different places.

When you click on a response via Results > IndividualResponses, you'll see a link to the uploaded file(s) on the Data tab of each individual response. Click that link and you'll have access to the file (it will either display or download, depending on the file type).

Note: SurveyGizmo uses an anti-virus software to scan files that respondents attempt to upload to your survey. If a file is found to be harmful, it will not be uploaded. When attempting to access such a file, you will see an Upload Failed (click for details) message:Click this message to view additional information about the file:

If you want to grab all the files at once, you can go to Results > Exports and use the Bulk File Export. This export will create a zip file that contains a folder with all the uploaded files.

Send Email Actions and Uploaded Files

Send Email Actions allow you to include links to uploaded files in the body of your email message via the following setting on the Advanced tab.

Note: If you want the file upload links that are included in emails to be accessible to individuals who do not have access to your SurveyGizmo account (your survey respondents, for example), you will need to disable the File Upload Security setting. Check out the Security section above for more details!

When File Upload Security is enabled, login to SurveyGizmo will be required to view the file.

If you have a Send Email Action in your survey to notify stakeholders that a new survey response has been submitted and this email action includes a link to respondent-uploaded files.

With File Upload Security enabled, the link will have the following format:

FAQ

The links to uploaded files vary depending on whether File Upload Security is enabled or disabled. If File Upload Security is enabled while fielding a survey, any file links that were shared prior to that will no longer be accessible. This will be the case if disabling security as well. New file links will need to be shared after the setting has been modified.

Note: If this setting is updated, changes will take several minutes to go into effect.

If a file link has been included in an email, how can it be accessed from that email?

File Upload Security enabled: Login will be required in order to view the files via the link provided in the email. Those individuals who do not have access to your SurveyGizmo account will not be able to view the files in this scenario.

If you are already logged into your SurveyGizmo account and click on the link within the email, you will be presented with the file.

File Upload Security disabled: If you have not restricted access to uploaded files to only logged-in users, login will not be required to view files included in the body of the email. Clicking on the link will provide access to the file.

Why can't I turn off the File Upload Security setting?

If you cannot uncheck the option Only logged-in SurveyGizmo users can access uploaded respondent files you have an account-level setting that can only be changed by SurveyGizmo with an Account Administrator's request.

Unfortunately, at this time the file size limit property cannot be set via the REST API and would have to be set via the UI. I can certainly note this with our Development Team as a potential future upgrade to the API capabilities as related to this question type.

Thank you again for your question!

David
Survey Explorer
SurveyGizmo Customer Support

— Marco.len on 09/22/2015

I'm trying to create a fileupload question through your REST API. But, I can't set the sizelimit. What can I do?

Admin

— Nathan Sollenberger on 09/09/2015

@Mattijs — A GET request to the surveyresponse object will actually only return a file name, for example:

I have a customer asking about the security of the files uploaded, Can you please provide me with a response I can provide them with.

Admin

— Bri Hillmer on 07/20/2015

@Nick: Thanks for taking a look at our documentation! Encrypting data uploaded to the file upload question is not in the near horizon. I can definitely make note of it for discussion with our development team for future improvements!

@Harry: Thanks for taking a look at our documentation! Have you checked out our comments feature that allows you to add an essay field to any question in your survey? Here is our tutorial that covers how to set this up:

https://help.surveygizmo.com/help/article/link/comments

As far as adding a file upload question to the list of available questions in a custom group, I will make note of this for discussion for future improvements with our development team.